Exporting from a specification via IFC to CAD

Tomorrow at the buildingSMART conference I'll be doing an slightly lengthier version of last week's presentation from the NBS-NLA BIM Conference. The added slides come from some experimental work that we are currently doing in the NBS Labs. As this will be public tomorrow, I thought I'd do a little blog post.

The process described below is using the BIM Academy (Prof Steve Lockley's) xbim component in parallel with the well structured NBS Create specification data to export from a spec to IFC and then import into a CAD model.

I always find pictures are better than words, so...

A wall "type" is configured in NBS Create - in this example, a simple clay, insulation, block cavity wall 

In NBS Create this creates a rich model of objects behind the scenes

(BIM without the user knowing they are doing BIM!)

In the NBS Labs the secret button is clicked and the type object is exported in IFC format 

 Within the CAD program it is now possible to swap a generic wall for the wall that has been carefully pre-configured in NBS Create. 

The new wall type within the CAD model is the same as that specified in the specification. Note that the materials and the thickness are the same.

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